podcasts – Gigaomhttp://gigaom.com
The industry leader in emerging technology researchMon, 19 Mar 2018 22:01:45 +0000en-UShourly1Clammr could breathe new life into podcasts, make audio easier to sharehttp://gigaom.com/2015/12/08/clammr-could-breathe-new-life-into-podcasts-make-audio-easier-to-share/
Tue, 08 Dec 2015 14:01:22 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=920871While the medium of podcasting is currently experiencing renewed interests — both business and from listeners, there are still some key issues that prevent a podcast from achieving the same level of mass distribution as written or video media.

In other words, sharing the best parts of a podcast isn’t as easy as it probably should be. A 40-minute-long podcast episode might have plenty of quotable, sharable moments, but doing so is kind of a pain. You can transcribe the entire quote and then share to Facebook/Twitter. Or, you could make a general comment and link to where that particular episode is hosted online, and allow those interested to figure out what you were talking about (even though they probably won’t). New startup Clammr has a solution that might be a game changer for podcasts, and interesting audio of all sorts.

The service, launching today, allows you to click a “Clammr” button whenever you come across a particularly interesting or sharable moment while listening to streaming audio. It then grabs a 24-second clip (starting a few seconds before you press the button to ensure you get the good parts) that can then be easily shared on Facebook, Twitter, etc. For Twitter, Clammr is actually only the second service to be granted access to a special embedded audio Twitter card (with SoundCloud being the other).

“We decided on 24 seconds because that’s roughly enough time to capture a good [clip] of a podcast or audio program, but not enough that it wastes your time,” Clammr cofounder Parviz Parvizi told Gigaom, adding that the length also lends itself very well to sharing.

With today’s launch, Clammr is also announcing partnerships with on-demand audio networks PodcastOne and Midroll, as well as integration with a slew of podcast hosting platforms such as Libsyn, Blubrry, Spreaker, Buzzsprout, Podbean, and others. The startup is also debuting an iOS app, which allows users to keep track of all the audio content they’ve Clammred and gain access to a playlist of all those audio clips. (I’m not entirely sure how useful that last feature might be right now.)

Parvizi said that Clammr isn’t just intended for listeners, and envisions podcast hosts using the short 24-second format to better promote their shows throughout the week. Beyond that, the service could also prove useful in getting more life out of video programming that typically never has the audio portion ripped. For instance, that last Superman v. Batman trailer? I’d have loved to use Clammr to rip only the super campy lines to share among friends.

As for a business model, Parvizi declined to elaborate but did say advertising and packaging Clammr into a premium product for media businesses were both possibilities.

]]>Apple is reportedly buying podcast app Swellhttp://gigaom.com/2014/07/28/apple-is-reportedly-buying-podcast-app-swell/
Mon, 28 Jul 2014 16:17:50 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=860821Apple (s AAPL) is buying the iOS podcast app Swell for $30 million, according to a Recode report. The transaction, which hasn’t been confirmed by either Apple or the Swell team, looks like a talent acquisition, as the app is reportedly being shut down later this week. Swell is one of a number of apps that puts a new spin on podcasts by streaming shows directly to mobile phones and using content recommendations for better discovery.
]]>Player FM relaunches with new UI and in-app indexinghttp://gigaom.com/2014/06/23/player-fm-relaunches-with-new-ui-and-in-app-indexing/
http://gigaom.com/2014/06/23/player-fm-relaunches-with-new-ui-and-in-app-indexing/#commentsMon, 23 Jun 2014 22:47:34 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=852614Podcast discovery service Player FM is in the process of launching a new version of its Android app that features a completely revamped user interface as well as something that will make Google very happy: in-app indexing, which will allow the search engine to highlight Player FM’s app within its mobile search results and further blur the lines between the web and native apps.

Player FM founder Michael Mahemoff told me Monday that the launch of the new 2.0 version of the app should complete by Monday night. By that time, all upgraded users will have access to a new UI that comes with a card-like interface for podcast episodes, a full-screen mode during playback, a sleep timer and the ability to change the playback speed of a podcast, which I guess could be helpful if you’re using podcasts to learn a foreign language.

Player FMs new card-based UI.

But one of the bigger changes is under the hood: Player FM is one of a number of Android apps that has added app indexing, which means that Google (A GOOG) is capable of crawling and indexing its in-app content as if it was a website. Google is using in-app indexing to surface app content in its user’s mobile search results. In the case of Player FM, this means that users who already have the app installed can search for a podcast title and find a link to the specific episode within the Player FM app directly within the search results.

For Google, these kinds of in-app results are a way to remain relevant in an era where online usage increasingly moves from desktops to mobile devices, and with that from the browser to dedicated apps. Google first announced in-app search at its Google I/O developer conference a year ago, and is likely going to update us on the development of the program at this year’s Google I/O conference in San Francisco later this week.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2014/06/23/player-fm-relaunches-with-new-ui-and-in-app-indexing/feed/1Player FM and Rocket Player get Chromecast supporthttp://gigaom.com/2014/04/11/player-fm-and-rocket-player-get-chromecast-support/
Fri, 11 Apr 2014 19:22:28 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=833938Chromecast owners just got a few more ways to beam audio to the big screen: Player FM, a podcast app and cloud service that we previously covered on Gigaom, added Chromecast support to its Android app Friday. Also now Chromecast-capable is Rocket Music, an Android music player that includes features like an equalizer and lyrics viewing. Don’t want to listen to your podcasts or music on your TV? Then you can always turn Chromecast into a networked audio player.
]]>Podcast app Pocket Casts gains Chromecast supporthttp://gigaom.com/2014/03/17/podcast-app-pocket-casts-gains-chromecast-support/
http://gigaom.com/2014/03/17/podcast-app-pocket-casts-gains-chromecast-support/#commentsMon, 17 Mar 2014 17:23:37 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=825500Listening to podcasts with a Chromecast(s goog) streaming stick just got a lot easier: Podcast app Pocket Casts’ Android version gained Chromecast support with its latest update, which was released Monday. The app, which also supports video podcasts, is available on Google Play for $3.99.

Granted, Pocket Casts isn’t the first podcast app to support Chromecast — BeyondPod launched a version capable of casting media to the big screen back in December — but the app has a dedicated community of users, and it may be worth a look for anyone trying to play podcasts with Chromecast.

And if you don’t feel like turning on your TV every time you want to listen to a podcast, you could just do what I did and turn your Chromecast into a streaming audio adapter for just a few bucks:

It’s true: Digg is doing original content, and one of its first pieces is a great long-form read titled “Is this thing on?” The article has radio journalist Stan Alcorn wondering why there are tons of viral videos on the internet, but rarely any viral audio stories. Alcorn found one great exception from that rule, but it’s not a podcast — and it may be hard to replicate. A must read for everyone interested in the future of radio, podcasts and online storytelling.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2014/01/17/why-audio-rarely-ever-goes-viral/feed/2SoundCloud turns 5, creators now upload 12 hours of audio every minutehttp://gigaom.com/2013/11/13/soundcloud-turns-5-creators-now-upload-12-hours-of-audio-every-minute/
http://gigaom.com/2013/11/13/soundcloud-turns-5-creators-now-upload-12-hours-of-audio-every-minute/#commentsWed, 13 Nov 2013 20:49:28 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=715623SoundCloud celebrated its fifth birthday Wednesday, and the Berlin-based startup marked the occasion by revealing an interesting usage data point: SoundCloud users now upload twelve hours of audio every minute, according to a blog post penned by the company’s CEO Alex Ljung. That’s impressive, but also shows that audio still isn’t as ubiquitous as video on the web. To compare, YouTube (S GOOG) surpassed 13 hours of video uploads per minute a little more than two years after its launch. Nowadays, people upload more than 100 hours of video per minute to the service.
]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/11/13/soundcloud-turns-5-creators-now-upload-12-hours-of-audio-every-minute/feed/1Pandora for podcasts app Swell raises $5.4 million Series A roundhttp://gigaom.com/2013/07/18/pandora-for-podcasts-app-swell-raises-5-4-million-series-a-round/
http://gigaom.com/2013/07/18/pandora-for-podcasts-app-swell-raises-5-4-million-series-a-round/#commentsThu, 18 Jul 2013 11:15:43 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=668694One of my favorite apps that I’ve downloaded recently for consuming the news wasn’t, in fact, an RSS reader or another Twitter client — it was Swell, which launched in June as a Pandora-like app for podcasts. And it seems that other users and investors are also a fan of Swell, with the company announcing Thursday that it’s raised $5.4 million in a Series A funding round.

The app allows you to quickly sign in, and then presents you with unlimited listening (and skips) of different podcast shows, so you can scroll through and find what you like. The best part of Swell is the wide variety of free content. The company has partnerships with NPR, American Public Media (creators of “Marketplace”), and ABC News, and the app also includes content from podcasts in iTunes like the BBC, CBC, Comedy Central, TED Talks and ESPN.

Listening to Swell introduced me to some old This American Life episodes I hadn’t heard before, an excellent interview with Square CEO Jack Dorsey, and a variety of news shows that kept me up-to-date on non-tech news of the day. I also took advantage of the feature that lets you send certain podcasts to friends via email.

One thing that I wasn’t totally clear about when the app launched was how it supports offline listening, but there’s a tab under settings that allows you to select downloads over wifi-only, and the app will switch to playing cached content, and not use your phone’s data.

The funding round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Google Ventures, InterWest Partners, Correlation Ventures, and Draper Nexus Ventures also participated. Swell’s CEO G.D. (Ram) Ramkumar was previously a founder and CTO at Snaptell, which allowed you to take photos of book or movie covers and connect to a store to purchase them. The company was acquired by Amazon in 2009.

The company had previously raised $1.8 million in seed funding led by Google Ventures, with Charles River Ventures, DFJ, Andreessen Horowitz, Inspovation Ventures, and angels participating.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/07/18/pandora-for-podcasts-app-swell-raises-5-4-million-series-a-round/feed/4ICYMI podcasts: QuickOffice v. Office, monitoring loved ones and “to print or not to print?”http://gigaom.com/2013/07/07/icymi-podcasts-quickoffice-v-office-monitoring-loved-ones-and-to-print-or-not-to-print/
Sun, 07 Jul 2013 14:00:54 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=664799Google(s goog) is showing off its QuickOffice integration on the developer channel of Chrome OS. On this week’s GigaOm Chrome Show, Chris Albrecht and Kevin Tofel discuss what the app, which uses native Office document formats for creation and editing, could mean for Microsoft’s(s msft) productivity package. Chromies can also get that new Photos app specifically made for the Pixel on practically any Chromebook: Tune in to find out how.

On this week’s Internet of Things podcast, Iggy Fanlo, CEO of Lively, explains to Stacey Higginbotham how monitoring the number of times a bathroom door opens and shuts can tell us about a person’s health. Fanlo’s Kickstarter project for Lively didn’t meet it’s funding goal, but Fanlo discusses that as well as other ways his company’s product can monitor friends and family in an unobtrusive way.

Finally, our weekly wrap-up podcast touches upon a few news bits during the holiday week plus the promise of going without a printer: Eliza Kern wonders if it’s finally possible in this digital age? And what exactly has T-Mobile(s tmus) being doing in the last two months since its merger? Turns out: quite a bit but mostly behind the scenes as Kevin Fitchard explains.

]]>Amazon Publishing launches Kindle Love Stories podcast, focused on romance bookshttp://gigaom.com/2013/05/13/amazon-publishing-launches-kindle-love-stories-podcast-focused-on-romance-books/
Mon, 13 May 2013 13:36:07 +0000http://paidcontent.org/?p=229302Amazon (s AMZN) hopes to harness the large community of romance readers with a new weekly romance podcast, “Kindle Love Stories.” It will feature author interviews, reviews and trends in romance books, and is accompanied by a book discussion group on Goodreads, the reading social network that Amazon acquired in March.

The podcast is sponsored by Amazon Publishing’s romance imprint, Montlake Romance. The first two featured titles — Crazy Little Thing by Tracy Brogan and The Second Chance Café by Alison Kent — were both published by Montlake, although USA Today, which first reported the news about the podcast, says that “the books discussed will span a variety of publishers and imprints, including indie-pubbed books.” (Many of those indie-pubbed books will likely be published through Amazon’s own KDP.)

The podcast host is Laura Roppé, a singer-songwriter and the author of Rocking the Pink: Finding Myself on the Other Side of Cancer, published by Seal Press in 2012.

There are a number of podcasts out there focused on romance books, including those from Smart Bitches Trashy Books and Romance Radio Network. One possible advantage of “Kindle Love Stories” is that, if it focuses primarily on titles published by Amazon, all of those titles should be available free to Kindle owners through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.